Related Links

The University of Texas-Pan American invites the public to attend the 2009 Davidson History Lecture Feb. 25 to hear Dr. Lisbeth Haas, an Organization of American Historians (OAH) distinguished lecturer, present the talk "Crossing Borders: Indigenous Histories of Spanish and Mexican California."

-Dr. Lisbeth Haas

The lecture, which begins at 7 p.m. in the UTPA Ballroom, is one of a long line of presentations by distinguished historians over the years as part of the Davidson History Lecture series honoring the late Dr. Rondel Davidson of the Department of History and Philosophy. Davidson endowed the semi-annual lecture in hopes to arouse interest in issues of history, identity, memory and cross-connections in the arts and humanities that arise from the study of the human past.

Haas, an associate professor in the University of California-Santa Cruz' Department of History, is a historian of borderlands, the colonial southwest, missions and Native American societies. She is author of the award-winning Conquests and Historical Identities in California, 1769-1936 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) that received the OAH's Elliott Rudwick Prize in 1997. Founded in 1907, the OAH promotes excellence in scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.

"Her lecture addresses borderlands history, with a kindred Hispanic, indigenous, Mexican and Anglo-North American heritage and cultural milieu, which should elicit comparative insights of interest to our local history," said Dr. David Carlson, assistant professor in the UTPA Department of History and Philosophy.